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Marxian Hermeneutics and
Heideggerian Social Theory: Interpreting and Transforming Our
World by Gerry Stahl
a dissertation submitted to the Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Northwestern
University Evanston,
Illinois June 1975 The original typewritten version is available at Northwestern University: Diss 378 N.U. 1975 5781m It is indexed in Dissertation Abstracts and available from University Microfilms The electronic version was created on the 25th anniversary of the document. Changes were limited to minor stylistic improvements and the graphics. Digital copies are available in html and pdf format at: http://GerryStahl.net/publications/dissertations/philosophy © 1975 Gerry Stahl all rights reserved Abstract Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory: Interpreting and Transforming Our World gerry stahl, northwestern university june 1975 Today neither philosophy of interpretation (hermeneutics) nor philosophy of society can legitimately proceed without the other. Interpretation of the world precedes the possibility of transforming it, according to Martin Heidegger, because the presence of beings is always already meaningfully structured. For Karl Marx, however, interpretations of the world are constituted by human praxis, the reproduction and transformation of social reality. The confrontation of Marx’s thought with Heidegger’s provides an appropriate historical medium for the indispensable task of bringing the problematics of critical social theory and philosophical hermeneutics to bear upon each other. The alternative notions, that hermeneutics either founds or is founded upon social analysis, are reconciled by interpreting Marx’s social methodology as being in accord with hermeneutic principles and by transforming Heidegger’s ontology to take account of social mediations. Thereby, Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics clarifies Marx’s methodological sophistication, rescuing Marxism from a history of mechanistic corruptions, while Marx’s insights into the power of social relations provide a corrective to the politically reactionary self-understanding, abstract form, scholastic structure and non-social content of Heidegger’s jargon. Thinking about Marx and Heidegger together is most fruitfully accomplished by a sympathetic study of their mature approaches and systems, focusing on the relation between beings and Being, the concrete and the abstract, the individual entity and its socio-historical context. Hermeneutic, political and internal justifications for the selection of specific primary texts, for not making explicit use of secondary works, and for interpreting the two philosophers through each others’ eyes are indicated in the introductory Part I. Above all, it is argued, a contemporary perspective on Marx is inevitably affected by Heidegger’s influence as well as by intervening political developments; and similarly for reading Heidegger. Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism plays a role analogous to Heidegger’s theory of the oblivion or Being. In both systems, the distorted appearance of things is related to the prevailing form of the Being of beings: their commodity form for Marx or their technological character for Heidegger. The commodity form of products and of human productive labor prevails in the bourgeois or capitalist era. Marx, whose methodology is specific to an analysis of this period, traces the historical and structural development of these commodity relations in primarily socio-economic terms. The way in which changes in the over-all social character are thereby related to concrete interactions provides the guiding theme of the Marx interpretation, which forms Part II. Where Marx relates the technological character of the commodity to its actual, concrete, everyday exchange in the marketplace as historically developed, Heidegger insists that the process by which, e.g., the technological character of beings has been given, the “Ereignis,” is ungrounded and incomprehensible. But such an insistence ignores the proper position of the Ereignis within Heidegger’s system: as the process of self-mediation and of totalization of all that which is present, The analogy between the role of the social character in Marx’s system and that of the Ereignis in Heidegger’s is drawn in the opening and closing remarks of Part III, the Heidegger interpretation. There it is argued that Heidegger’s alternative conceptualization weakens Marx’s sense of the historical limits of theory as well as foregoing all ability to comprehend transformations of Being or society concretely. Considering Heidegger and Marx together suggests that Heidegger’s central fault is in failing to relate changes in Being –- the historically prevalent form of presence of beings –- to developments within the concrete social realm of entities. Changes of ontological interpretation can, as Marx demonstrates, be comprehended in terms of transformations within society, whereby, of course, the social theory must itself be hermeneutically appropriate. Marxian Hermeneutics and Heideggerian Social Theory: Interpreting and Transforming Our
World Man müsse durch
die Eiswüste der
Abstraktion hindurch,
um zu konkretem
Philosophieren bündig zu
gelangen. – Adorno quoting Benjamin PrefaceToday neither philosophy of interpretation (hermeneutics) nor philosophy of society can legitimately proceed without the other. Interpretation of the world precedes the possibility of transforming it, according to Martin Heidegger, because the presence of beings is always already meaningfully structured. For Karl Marx, however, interpretations of the world are constituted by human praxis, the reproduction and transformation of social reality. The confrontation of Marx’s thought with Heidegger’s provides an appropriate historical medium for the indispensable task of bringing the problematics of critical social theory and philosophical hermeneutics to bear upon each other. The alternative notions, that hermeneutics either founds or is founded upon social analysis, are reconciled by interpreting Marx’s social methodology as being in accord with hermeneutic principles and by transforming Heidegger’s ontology to take account of social mediations. Thereby, Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics clarifies Marx’s methodological sophistication, rescuing Marxism from a history of mechanistic corruptions, while Marx’s insights into the power of social relations provide a corrective to the politically reactionary self-understanding, abstract form, scholastic structure and non-social content of Heidegger’s jargon. Such a consideration of Marx and Heidegger together strengthens the position of each. Because they stand firmly within a shared post-Hegelian German tradition, the merging of their ideas proceeds by merely drawing out what is already implicitly present. Thinking about Marx and Heidegger together is most fruitfully accomplished by a sympathetic study of their mature approaches and systems, focusing on the relation between beings and Being, the concrete and the abstract, the individual entity and its socio-historical context. This strategy determines the selection of texts to be analyzed. Rather than centering on accidentally parallel discussions of explicitly political issues, writings are chosen with the goal of developing the most important systematic and methodological themes of Marx’s and Heidegger’s thought. Their mature presentations –- Volume I of Das Kapital (1867) and the lecture on Time and Being (1962) –- are taken as standards, with other works drawn upon to trace the developments leading up to them. Hermeneutic, political and internal justifications for the selection of specific primary texts, for not making explicit use of secondary works, and for interpreting the two philosophers through each others’ eyes are indicated in the introductory Part I. Above all, it is argued, a contemporary perspective on Marx is inevitably affected by Heidegger’s influence as well as by intervening political developments; and similarly for reading Heidegger. While less central points of direct contact between the writings of Marx and those of Heidegger have been ignored, several correspondences have been thematized. A primary motivating presupposition of both Marx’s and Heidegger’s project is the belief that true reality lies hidden from our direct perceptions. Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism plays a role analogous to Heidegger’s theory of the oblivion or Being. In both systems, the distorted appearance of things is related to the prevailing form of the Being of beings: their commodity form for Marx or their technological character for Heidegger. Heidegger’s “technological stock” has essentially the same characteristics as Marx’s “commodity.” Both forms are, furthermore, historically specific. Technological stock is the characteristic form of the Being of beings in the modern epoch, which is, according to Heidegger, historically given by Being-as-such or the Ereignis. Correspondingly, for Marx, the commodity form of products and of human productive labor prevails in the bourgeois or capitalist era. Marx, whose methodology is specific to an analysis of this period, traces the historical and structural development of these commodity relations in primarily socio-economic terms. The way in which changes in the over-all social character are thereby related to concrete interactions provides the guiding theme of the Marx interpretation, which forms Part II. Where Marx relates the technological character of the commodity to its actual, concrete, everyday exchange in the marketplace as historically developed, Heidegger insists that the process by which, e.g., the technological character of beings has been given, the “Ereignis,” is ungrounded and incomprehensible. But such an insistence ignores the proper position of the Ereignis within Heidegger’s system: as the process of self-mediation and of totalization of all that which is present. To divorce mediation from its content is hypostatization; to project social totalization beyond its socio-historical limits is to fall behind Marx’s level of methodological self-reflection. The analogy between the role of the social character in Marx’s system and that of the Ereignis in Heidegger’s is drawn in the opening and closing remarks of Part III, the Heidegger interpretation. There it is argued that Heidegger’s alternative conceptualization weakens Marx’s sense of the historical limits of theory as well as foregoing all ability to comprehend transformations of Being or society concretely. Considering Heidegger and Marx together suggests that Heidegger’s central fault is in failing to relate changes in Being –- the historically prevalent form of presence of beings –- to developments within the concrete social realm of entities. Changes of ontological interpretation can, as Marx demonstrates, be comprehended in terms of transformations within society, whereby, of course, the social theory must itself be hermeneutically appropriate. *** The
methodological reflections on thinking about Marx and Heidegger together, the
interpretation of Marx, and the analysis of Heidegger are each carried out in
three chapters, as summarized below: The
dialectic of essence and appearance at work in the systems of both Marx and
Heidegger represents a shared response to present social appearances as
obscuring the potential for a better world, one which would incorporate new
forms of ontological relations (Part I). But the two
mainstreams of contemporary continental thought which flow from these systems,
and which appeal especially to those interested in transforming the world,
problematize each other. Issues both internal and external to Marx’s theory
and Heidegger’s thought call for a reckoning by each with the other (Chapter
I). Heidegger, for instance, accuses Marxism of adopting “metaphysical”
conceptualizations (Chapter II), while Marxists respond
that Heidegger has ignored the impact of social conditions upon his thought (Chapter
III). Marx’s
works are construed as interpretations of the social relations underlying
appearances which have been distorted by capitalist relations (Part
II). His early writings, Alienated
Labor and Theses on
Feuerbach, anticipations of his mature critique of political
economy, occasionally substitute the critical appropriation of prevalent
metaphysical hypotheses for the stringent methodology subsequently used (Chapter
IV). Marx’s Grundrisse then
develops the appropriate historical analyses, economic categories and
hermeneutic methodology though theoretical research (Chapter
V). Finally, Capital
systematically presents the analysis of capitalist society, starting
dialectically from the abstractions arrived at in the capitalist economy (Chapter
VI). The hermeneutic accord between Marx’s interpretations of the world
and the historic processes which reproduce and transform the world, the manifold
unity of Marx’s social theory and capitalist social practice, saves Marx’s
system from the charge of being metaphysical by deriving its method from its
object. Heidegger’s post-war
thought offers an alternative to Marxism by focusing on the general,
non-economic relationship between entities and their form of presence in a given
historical epoch (Part III). The
Origin of the Work
of Art
presents Heidegger’s “reversal” toward Being-as-such, formulating his
central question of Being in terms of the origin of the historically specific
form of presence of a work which establishes its own presence (Chapter
VII). The tendency here to give an absolute priority to Being develops in
the essay The Thing, which
introduces his mature theoretical framework. (Chapter VIII).
Heidegger’s final statement, the lecture on Time
and Being,
takes a meta-ontological overview of the history of the forms of presence which,
however, leaves the concrete details of historical ontological transformations
shrouded in mystery (Chapter IX). Thereby, the
ontological self-interpretation of the world is illegitimately divorced from its
ontic self-transformation, leaving Heidegger’s social commentary content-less
and messianic next to Marx’s. *** Note:
Chapter III is copywritten by the journal in which it appeared as “The Jargon
of Authenticity: An Introduction to a Marxist Critique of Heidegger” by Gerry
Stahl (Boundary II,
Department of English, SUNY-Binghamton, NY 13901, Winter 1975, pp. 439-497). Quotations:
All quotations are given in English. Translations from the German are based upon
the best available English versions, but are revised without notice for
increased literalness and consistency. References to texts of Marx and Heidegger
are given to both the translation and the original, with English page numbers
preceded by p and German by S. *** The
present work represents the culmination or thirty years of progress toward the
author’s intellectual maturity. As such, it is a token of gratitude to all
those who have contributed, however unknowingly, to that process. It is,
accordingly, dedicated to those magical moments when truth makes its appearance
unannounced, but deservedly, within a social gathering.
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